Friday, 25 March 2016

World's Most Expensive Watches

The Swiss-made Chopard Super Ice Cube features 60 carats of diamonds cut into perfect cubes. This luxury watch and bracelet is water resistant to 100 feet. $ 1.1m

Housed in an elaborate 18-karat white gold case, the Patek Philippe Sky Moon Tourbillonit has a solid gold dial coated with blue enamel in champlevé and cloisonné techniques to create artistic functional elements. Three to five will be completed per year. Around $1.2 million.

The Excalibur Quatuor silicon watch take 2,400 hours to build and over 7 years of research to create. Each of its balances pulse four times per second, so instead of a classic ticking watch, it sounds more like a whirring machine.

Only three of these watches exist in the world, each made of 590 parts. $1.1m

The Hublot Classic Fusion Haute Joaillerie “$1 Million,” limited to only eight pieces, features 1,185 baguette diamonds covering every surface of the watch, from the case and bracelet to the openworked dial.

For the case alone, a 15-person team had to perform 1,800 hours of cutting and 200 hours of dimensional checking and quality control. $1.2m

The Jaeger-LeCoultre Hybris Mechanica à Grande Sonnerie has 1,300 parts, which make it capable of playing the entire Big Ben chiming sequence. $ 1.4m.

Produced as a limited edition of only seven pieces, the Vacheron Constantin Tour de I’Ile, which celebrated the brand’s 250th anniversary, is priced at $1,538,160. The watch has two faces (front and back) to make room for its many displays, including a second time zone, perpetual calendar, and sunset time indicator, among others.

The Greubel Forsey Art Piece 1 was revealed in 2013, and quickly rose to the upper echelon of the “most expensive watches ever made” rankings, with a price of CHF 1.5m (about $1.6m).

Richard Mille upped the ante in 2014 with the launch of the Richard Mille Tourbillon RM 56-02 Sapphire. Richard Mille’s most expensive watch yet, which breaks not only the $1 million barrier but the $2 million one as well, priced at a very cool $2m

The A. Lange & Söhne Grand Complication, unveiled in 2013, is priced at a whooping 1.92 million euros (about $2,497,000 US). The Grand Complication features a grand sonnerie and petit sonnerie in addition to a minute repeater, a monopusher chronograph with a split-seconds function and jumping seconds, and a perpetual calendar with a moon-phase display.

The Platinum World Time created by Patek Philippe was sold at auction for over $4m in 2002.

It is believed that only one was created and, at the time, it was the most expensive wristwatch in the world.

The 18-karat gold pocket watch Super Complication made by Patek Philippe for banker Henry Graves Jr. in 1933 required five years to design and build. It possesses 24 “complications,” or mechanical features beyond basic timekeeping, including a different chronological function for each hour of the day. It was the most complicated watch ever created and the most expensive watch ever sold at auction. $11m.

This Swiss-made Chopard watch features three heart-shaped diamonds of 38 carats, surrounded by white and yellow diamonds weighing 163 carats.

$26m.

Graff Diamonds Hallucination watch. The bracelet has a tiny face and huge coloured diamonds all set in platinum.